i thought i’d clicked to play today’s song and it somehow led me to this link. i have no idea what i clicked.

November 15th, 2009 | Comments Off on

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;
there remains for us yesterday’s street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces.
Whom would it not remain for–that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence,
which the solitary heart so painfully meets.
Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don’t you know yet?
Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe;
perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.

-rainer maria rilke, duino elegies

November 15th, 2009 | Comments Off on

this is what i imagine god looks like. except his light is blue, not red.

read this when i’m smarter.

November 15th, 2009 | Comments Off on

i understand that my weakness is often that i can’t see what’s right in front of me, or what is most obvious. i have blindspots. sometimes i need trustworthy people to help me out by telling me what i’m not seeing.

November 15th, 2009 | Comments Off on

There’s an urban legend that when the Indians first saw Columbus’s ships, they weren’t able to perceive the ships because they were nothing they’d ever encountered in their world. The validity of the story is often debated, but i think what the story really opens a discussion for is the idea of perception. a guy posting as silas sparkhammer on the snopes boards had some good comments:

Again, go into a forest (if you have never been in one) and you will have a great deal of difficulty finding your way around. This confusion won’t last for mere seconds, but for hours and hours. It takes time for the brain to figure out entirely new patterns.

Take someone who doesn’t know how to play chess. Take another person who is a master of the game. They both see exactly the same light patterns reflecting off of the pieces on the board…but they perceive *very* different things.

There’s also this experiment in visual cognition. Check it out. Did you see it? I saw it.

And that’s the thing. Perceiving people on multiple levels. Keeping an eye out for the WTF.

Last night, when I was out people watching, I was thinking about those Indians not recognizing the boats. Maybe there are certain people who are around in your world, but you can’t see them because you haven’t enough perspective to recognize them. So you recognize they’re people, but you don’t really “see” them. But when you get into a different place, different eyes, different frames of reference, you can suddenly recognize them. Through your connection with them, they suddenly bring your life to a different level.

November 15th, 2009 | Tags: | Comments Off on

maybe the most unselfish thing the sun can do is keep his distance, knowing that drawing things towards him, even if he’s choking with loneliness, would be catastrophic.

November 15th, 2009 | Comments Off on

well, well. it seems you and i have created a portal.

November 15th, 2009 | Comments Off on